Unmanned convenience stores, first envisioned by Amazon, are popping up in China, enabled by mobile payment and supported by facial and voice recognition technologies. Little-known tech start-up BingoBox, based in Guangdong province, has made its name in China this summer by opening its first unmanned convenience store in Shanghai. In a container-like structure stocked with products supplied by French supermarket chain Auchan, BingoBox lets customers go shopping after they are admitted via facial recognition to the 10-square meter area. Security measures ensure that those inside the store are customers and not shoplifters who entered illegally. Sensors and cameras scattered throughout the area identify items in the shoppers’ carts and automatically charge the customer’s WeChat Wallet, a smartphone-enabled mobile payment run by Tencent, as they walk out the door. With a dozen such stores under trial operation in China, BingoBox is looking to beat much bigger companies to become the first to commercialize the new shopping model on a national scale. “We want to adopt a rather aggressive approach in terms of expansion,” said Chen Zilin, Founder of BingoBox, adding the goal is to have 5,000 such stores in China in the coming year via a franchise model. More than 10 companies from big retail chains to small start-ups have launched unmanned stores, with more than CNY130 million in venture capital money invested in the sector in the past three weeks, according to Chinese research firm IT Juzi. In theory, unmanned stores that are open 24 hours a day can reduce labor costs and therefore lower retail prices for customers, the South China Morning Post reports.